Texas Ranger

Five Straight- Fastest to 50 Wins

You know, sometimes you just get too close to something. You lose perspective. If anyone picked up a newspaper to check the baseball standings, they would see a Ranger team in first place in the AL West by 6.5 games. 22 Games over .500, winners of five in a row. They would think, “man, that team is really good”. Make no doubts. We are. But we are banged up and top to bottom almost everyone in the batting order can’t string together three good games. I said it the other day. What happens when we get healthy and guys like Napoli and Hamilton start hitting the ball?

Today was a great game. We took our seventh series in a row. We started the year winning our first six. This is a different ball club than the one in April. But they bang it out every night. Martin Perez was effective in his first start and Josh Hamilton drove in four as the Rangers beat the A’s 7-2. Even more outstanding was the fact that Wash didn’t have to use Mike Adams or Joe Nathan today. Now they have two days rest. Tomorrow it’s back to work to see if we can finish the A’s (and get THAT monkey off our backs finally), with Yu Darvish going for win number eleven. Darvish has already said he doesn’t think he is an All Star and I like that. I don’t want him to over analyze his performance to date, but his scrutiny is great.

After that, we have one of those odd ball road trips. Three in Chicago, then back home before the break. At least we stay in the same time zone.